


The Favorite

by wheel_pen



Series: Darkwood Eastport [11]
Category: Lie to Me (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Fish out of Water, Magic, Polygamy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-19 23:10:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3627780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sheriff Burke meets six-year-old Laura Orange Light, the “favorite” child, at the Darkwood Diner and reflects on how the clans have fit in since moving to town.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Favorite

**Author's Note:**

> The bad words are censored; that’s just how I do things. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play in this universe. I’ve given a lot of thought to the Darkwood culture, so if something seems confusing, feel free to ask. I hope you enjoy!

It was not the sort of day that made you glad to be a citizen of Eastport. Oh, it wasn’t bitterly cold, pouring rain, whipping up a blizzard or hurricane—but such extreme weather made _some_ people feel they were really battling Mother Nature in an exciting, gets-your-blood-flowing way. Instead the day was just grey—chilly enough to make you wish you’d worn a warmer coat, rain occasionally spitting from the steel-colored sky, a nippy breeze blowing off the sea, the faded light even at noon making everything look dull and shabby. It was well past tourist season, fortunately, so the local business-people couldn’t complain about lost revenue due to disgruntled visitors promised sunny, buoyant ocean views. But on a day like today, everyone found other things to complain about.

Charlie Burke tried not to give in to the gripes himself. Not that he was normally of an upbeat, cheerful disposition, but he preferred to stay on a more or less even keel, and not be distracted by something as impenetrable as the weather. Still, as he sat in the Darkwood Diner at lunchtime, he couldn’t help feeling that nothing on the menu sounded good today, except maybe a piece of chocolate pie, and hadn’t he just gotten after Emma for not wanting to eat anything but chocolate Pop-Tarts for breakfast that morning? Besides, he had a long route to drive today, around the perimeter of the island, and if he only had coffee and chocolate pie to fuel him he was going to be pretty grouchy when he got home.

As Charlie was trying to decide which of the sandwiches he felt more like, the bell above the door jangled and he glanced over idly to see who had entered. It was a little girl, followed swiftly by Dr. Orange Light, whom Charlie assumed was her father. He didn’t think he’d seen this particular girl before—the Darkwood “clans” had a lot of children, but Charlie thought he would have remembered her. She looked like one of the porcelain dolls his grandmother used to collect—fiery red hair curled into perfect ringlets, pale skin with a dusting of freckles, a hunter green dress and matching jacket trimmed in white fluff, shiny black Mary Janes. When Charlie finally looked away from her, he saw that Dr. Orange Light, clad in his usual wrinkled suit and heavy jacket, had a slight smirk on his face, as if he knew everyone was looking from this little china doll to him and thinking that they didn’t match at all.

The girl started for the counter with its shiny blue stools, but her father clicked his tongue at her and she turned back to him, uncertain. Dr. Orange Light nodded towards the table in the back corner of the room, where a young woman sat with a laptop, a pile of receipts, and a resigned expression on her face. That was Bella Black Swan, a member of the clan that ran the diner—a special member, it seemed, as every Darkwood person who entered the restaurant walked back to greet her despite her obvious discomfort with the attention. She managed to find a smile for the little girl, at least, who made a little curtsy to her—it was almost disturbingly cute, Charlie felt, and he had sat through his fair share of school plays with Emma and her classmates dressed up as pirates or chickens. Dr. Orange Light bowed to the young woman and received a nod in turn, then made his way back to the counter, acknowledging the other Darkwood members in the room with his own nods. Charlie had been observing the clans all summer and he still hadn’t unraveled their social structure, why some people got formal bows and others mere nods. All he’d figured out so far was that it didn’t seem to divide along gender lines—and that handshakes were definitely unpopular.

Dr. Orange Light settled onto a seat two down from Charlie. “Sheriff,” he greeted, though not with a smile. Charlie didn’t take it personally—he had quickly realized that Dr. Orange Light was a little eccentric, even for a Darkwood member. He was a psychologist by trade and often gave the impression that he was studying the people around him the way an exterminator studied bugs.

“Doctor,” Charlie acknowledged. Well, he was known to keep himself fairly reserved, too. ‘Dry’ was how Emma put it—‘dry like stale toast.’

Dr. Orange Light whispered something to his daughter, who had climbed up into the seat between him and Charlie, and she swiveled to face the sheriff with intense green eyes just like her father’s. Finally she burbled something in her native language, after the doctor had poked her again.

Charlie guessed its meaning easily enough. “Hello,” he replied. “What’s your name?”

Dr. Orange Light translated the question. The adults and older children all spoke English pretty well, but this girl was apparently still learning. “Laura,” she answered clearly, after a moment.

“That’s a very pretty name,” Charlie told her. “How old are you, Laura?”

Her answer was not in English, but she held up six fingers. “Six? Wow. That’s very grown up,” Charlie responded. She nodded vigorously in agreement after his remark was translated.

The girl turned away abruptly, having decided that getting her coat off in the warm diner was more important than continuing the conversation, but Charlie was okay with that. His ex—a kindergarten teacher—had always been the one who was better with kids. Instead Charlie made up his mind about lunch and watched the father-daughter pair from the corner of his eye. Some of the Darkwood adults were quite friendly, others more reserved, but Charlie had noticed that on the whole they were quite affectionate with young children. He was used to seeing Dr. Orange Light with his teenagers, though, so it was still novel to witness the normally standoffish, intimidating man fuss over the little girl’s coat and smooth her hair down.

Alice Black Swan, the waitress most frequently working at the diner, bounced over to take Charlie’s order, then the Orange Lights’. There was also an Orange Light daughter named Alice who worked as a waitress at the diner, though Charlie hadn’t seen her today—normally he would assume she was in school, but the Darkwood children were all homeschooled and he didn’t know what kind of schedule they kept to. He thought the local kids seemed a bit disappointed that they didn’t have the chance to observe the newcomers on a daily basis, though the school administrators frankly weren’t sad when they learned seventy-five or so school-aged kids would _not_ be dumped into their tiny district. The high school only had about one hundred twenty kids in it total, after all.

Charlie’s sandwich appeared quickly—sometimes he thought they knew what he wanted before he had decided himself—and shortly thereafter another plate was placed in front of his neighbors. To Charlie it looked like a large, oval serving platter type of thing (he was not the cook in the family), but it was what the menu cheerfully described as “a plate for two”—apparently a common feature in Darkwood society, where people tended to eat off each other’s plates quite readily, at least within the same family. Dr. Orange Light pushed the plate of pasta more equally between himself and his daughter, but the little girl had a different plan: she wanted to sit in his lap. Charlie had seen that, to, plenty of times, though usually with slightly younger children. Her father tried to dissuade her, but Charlie could see she was a persistent child and it didn’t take too long for him to give in.

For all the rumors that had preceded them—and there had been plenty—Charlie didn’t think the Darkwood members were nearly as odd or “exotic” as he had been expecting. It tended to be the little things, like sharing plates or bowing, that were the most different, and they usually only did those things among themselves anyway. Considering that they were polygamists who could have multiple wives _and_ husbands, as well as large numbers of kids, anyway. In appearance they weren’t really that different, certainly—the adults were almost entirely white and didn’t really look “alike,” any more than the other inhabitants of Eastport did; and though many of the adopted children weren’t white, they didn’t appear to come from just one particular ethnicity but rather almost every one you could think of.

They also didn’t wear any special kind of clothing; Charlie had been told that the clans in Los Angeles were very strict about what could be worn outside the home, especially by women, and as a result the members always wore long sleeves and covered their legs completely, and the women covered their hair. But this new group of clans in Eastport had agreed that the whole island would be like their home, or so Charlie had heard, and though he’d never spotted one in a bikini or even a tank top over the just-ended summer, their clothing was entirely normal. He’d occasionally glimpsed them on trips to nearby towns, however, and noted the hair-covering and increased modesty there—though in this multi-cultural day and age, he didn’t think they really stood out in the larger cities.

Certainly their behavior was different from what he’d expected. Emma’s celebrity magazines suggested the LA clans did little but attend charity balls and fundraiser dinners, the women and children rarely leaving their magnificent mansions otherwise unless it was to go to someone _else’s_ magnificent mansion. In Eastport, the Darkwood houses were necessarily large (given the number of people living in them) and money didn’t seem to be a concern for them, but their lifestyles weren’t flashy and extravagant by any means—they didn’t court camera crews or give interviews to national magazines (though goodness knew there were plenty of opportunities when they first came to town), they didn’t build castles in the middle of downtown, and as far as Charlie knew their weren’t celebrity pals flying into town on the weekends.

Their lives seemed really quite ordinary—the adults generally worked somewhere in town, the kids participated in Scouts and sports, the older teens usually had part-time jobs in their parents’ businesses. So far Charlie hadn’t observed any of the kids running wild or getting into trouble, and they tended to be out on the town only in small groups of two or three. If he had expected to see large herds of children being led around town, to restaurants or the grocery store, say, well, he was disappointed—the largest family groups he saw out regularly were just the ones going to church each week in an orderly procession. And that was another surprise, that they followed religions that were also found in Eastport, and that they didn’t all follow the _same_ religion. Among the Orange Light family, for example, one wife had been spotted at the Christ Episcopal Church and the other at St. Joseph’s—and Charlie had heard that the other husband was Jewish. They’d only been around a few months—through tourist season, really—but Charlie felt they could become valuable members of this small community.

Assuming they survived their first New England winter, of course.

Charlie’s plate was empty before he knew it, and the chocolate pie was calling his name. Jasper Black Swan was quite talented when it came to cooking things that Charlie probably shouldn’t eat.

He wasn’t the only one drawn to the dessert, however. Laura Orange Light was pointing to the display case eagerly, saying something rapid and pleading to her father. But the psychologist was firm this time—one confident “no” met the little girl’s request, and after that she merely received an unnerving stare, as if he were asking, “Do you _really_ think you will win this argument?” Charlie opted against the pie himself, not wanting to tempt her further. After a brief attempt to stare down her father, Laura gave up. A few minutes later they left the diner, hand in hand.

“How about a piece of that chocolate pie, Sheriff?” Alice Black Swan suggested brightly.

“Well…” Charlie hesitated and glanced back to see the Orange Lights disappearing down the street. “I guess so.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t get her pie,” Alice commented conversationally, slicing some for Charlie.

“The little redhead?”

Alice nodded. “She’s definitely… Hmm, what’s the word in English?” she wondered. Many of the Darkwood members didn’t have accents at all that Charlie could detect, so it still caught him by surprise when they didn’t know a word or expression. “I don’t think _spoiled_ is right, because that’s like sour milk and rotten vegetables.” She made a face. “But she’s sort of like… a favorite.”

“Favorite?” Charlie repeated, glancing up from his pie, which was quickly becoming a favorite itself. Alice was a chatty but good-natured young woman, a good source of Darkwood info.

“There’s usually one for every mother,” she went on knowledgeably. “A favorite child, who gets more treats or attention.”

“Don’t the other kids resent them?” Charlie asked sensibly. Maybe resentment didn’t exist in the Valley.

Alice shrugged. “Sometimes, if the parents aren’t careful. But usually the _favorite_ children are expected to take care of their parents when they get older, and never marry or have kids themselves.” Charlie nodded, thinking this over. “Anyway, for being the favorite poor little Laura doesn’t get out much! Her skin’s terribly sensitive to the sun, you see. I suppose Lord Cal thought it would be okay today because it’s so cloudy. But the first week they were here she got an awful sunburn after playing at the park and had to go to the clinic! She’s worse than Bella,” Alice finished, nodding towards her wife at the back of the room.

“What was that word he was saying to her—like ‘fee fee’?” Charlie asked. He liked to pick up a bit of the Darkwood lingo when he could.

“Oh, it’s Fifi,” Alice pronounced helpfully. “It’s her nickname. I don’t know _how_ they get that from ‘Laura,’ though.”


End file.
